You Know It's Time to Lose Weight When:

A. At Thanksgiving, your sister tells you she thought you were pregnant and just not telling everyone yet.

B. All the size XL sweatpants you bought at Old Navy are too tight.

Feel free to add to the list in the comments.

Holiday Weekend

I'm back at work, listening to Christmas music on the radio. The local lite station has already made the switch to Christmas songs 'round the clock. We'll see how long I last before I have to change the channel.

Thanksgiving was wonderful, as usual, other than the extremely windy conditions. Always a great holiday and less stressful than Christmas. Dinner at my parents' house with the traditional trimmings - turkey, dressing (or filling, as they say here in PA), mashed potatoes, peas, marshmallow salad (or ambrosia, if you prefer, sans JELL-O), pumpkin pie and pumpkin roll, and of course, birthday cake for my sister, J., whose birthday was Friday. My parents also celebrated their 38th wedding anniversary, which already has me stressing about what we should do for their 40th. I'm thinking a big family vacation (Disney?) instead of a party, but I haven't run it by anyone else yet. Any ideas?

I had one Black Friday experience, which was a trip to Michaels for refill pages for my scrapbook, along with some other odds and ends. (I rarely go shopping on Black Friday - I prefer the day after Christmas more than the day after Thanksgiving. I'd rather sit at home and watch all the holiday decorating shows on HGTV.) This was around 4pm and I had H. with me. There was a long line to check out - only 4 registers open with two lines, each feeding into two registers. They lines were moving very slowly, but I didn't hear any rumblings from the front, so thought it was just the usual. But then, I get to the front of the line and the checkout girl tells me, "You know our registers are down, right?" No, I didn't know that. "Well, they've been down for about 45 minutes. We can bag up all your stuff, then if you can wait, we'll ring it up when the registers are back online." Ah, technology! Absolutely no back-up system in place for handling this kind of problem on the busiest shopping day of the year. While I was trying to get more information from the girl, by some miracle in the heavens, the registers came back up and I was able to check out. The machine still wouldn't take my credit card, so after waiting 5 minutes for the transaction to time out, I ended up writing a check.

Life was back to normal on Saturday - grocery shopping and laundry. H. took a three-hour nap after having very short naps on both Thursday and Friday, then the three of us went to the Festival of Trees at the Timonium Fairgrounds. It wasn't very crowded and not quite what I thought it would be. The trees were interspersed throughout the building, competing with craft vendors, food and the silent auction. The floor plan could have been better to make it easier to see the trees, but it was entertaining for a couple of hours and there was a carousel to ride, which H. enjoyed.

On Sunday, I launched into cleaning and holiday decorating. I scrubbed the kitchen floor, which it needed desperately, then started putting away all the everyday knicknacks to make way for the Christmas decorations. The living room looks so bare, but shiny, waiting for me to carry boxes up from the basement. I did finish decorating the china closet, putting out my holiday china and matching accessories, plus sticking the wreath on the front door, which is the easiest thing to do first. I'll keep doing a little bit each night this week, but I didn't want to put anything out on the tables in the living room until we bring in the tree, which we'll probably go get this Saturday. We're going to try putting the tree in the living room this year instead of the family room, since H. has completely taken over that room, plus there's more furniture than there used to be in the family room (last year's entertainment center Christmas gift) with no place to move it to to clear a spot for the tree. We'll give it a try and if we don't like it, we can always switch back next year.

The next few weeks are going to be very busy, well into January - tree and decorating this weekend, a short trip to NYC for work, the Children's Holiday Party at work, shopping and wrapping, baking, etc., but I've got a plan and I'm looking forward to it all!

Has He Ever Actually Talked to a Student?

What does the comment below say about MSU Assistant Vice President Chuck Gagliano's opinion of the intelligence of the average Michigan State student? If I were a student, I would be insulted.

Gagliano said he has not noticed Michigan State students eating more
protein and fewer carbohydrates. "I'm not even sure they know what carbohydrates are," he said.

Welcome to the 21st Century!

I'm updating from home, via my cable modem! First a Starbucks in town, now this! Everything loads so fast, it's like being at work. I should be able to update with pictures more, since I could never add photos from work. Case in point, I've updated the Halloween entry with some photos, although the actual costume pictures are still on the roll. More to come...

ZZZZZZZZZZ

I'm being punished for taking a two-hour nap yesterday, although I don't know why. With the time change last weekend, H. woke up at 5:30am most mornings last week, instead of the usual 6:30am, including a 5:30am wake-up call Sunday morning. So while she was taking her nap yesterday, I took one, too, from about 2pm-4pm. I woke up from that terrific nap with a headache, which seemed to be gone by dinner.

I usually have some trouble falling asleep on Sunday nights, so I stayed up and watched all of the Ravens game (which was worth watching to the end), then went to bed around 11:30am. Well, 1:30am rolled around and I was still wide awake, and the headache had returned. So I got up and took some Excedrin, then lay down on the couch for about an hour, reading. I went back to bed at 2:30am, but still didn't fall asleep until well after 3am!

So I'm paying for my two-hour nap with minus six hours of sleep. I'm looking forward to the dull headache, sandpaper eyes and achy neck I'll be experiencing all day, not to mention the malaise that should set in after lunch. Happy Monday!

Halloween and Such

Sunday was a terrific day all around. The weather was so beautiful, a perfect fall day. M., H. and I spent the morning outside, jumping in the leaves that M. blew into a big pile, then walking up and down our street collecting different colored leaves.



H. didn't want to come inside. I think I took almost a whole roll of pictures of her playing and she hadn't even put her costume on yet! We had carved our pumpkin the night before (while watching To Kill a Mockingbird), but H. didn't really know what to make of it. She stuck her hand in the pulp once and that was enough for her. After we finished and the pumpkin was lit, she kept trying to blow out the candle and make a wish. "It's not your birthday!" I tried to explain to her.



After H's nap and the Ravens' game, we drove over to my parents' neighborhood for trick-or-treating with K&K. Wendy and Shane came too, with Meghan, and we had a great time. H. as Raggedy Ann stood out among our three princesses - Big K was a fairy princess, Little K was Belle and Meghan was Cinderella. I thought H. would be more excited to walk around this year, since she didn't even know how to walk last year, but I guess she's still a little too young. After the first couple of houses, she wanted to be carried. But she did go up to everyone and hold out her bag, saying "Trick or Treat" and "Thank you" some of the time. We were out for about an hour and that was plenty for everyone.

Pictures will follow eventually, as usual. The digital camera I've had my eye on has come down in price some and is tempting me., especially with 12 months free financing. I need to go to Circuit City this weekend to get some software for the computer before we get our cable modem installed next week (finally!), so we'll see if I'm able to resist it or not. It would certainly make updating this site easier and more timely!